"All About Eve" vs "Sunset Boulevard"

RIP Celeste. I knew her first for this (w/ Lesley Anne Warren):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27K6nlVEdSc

In the segment of "The Clock" I saw last night, Rex Harrison has a cruel/funny monologue about time, adapted by Mankiewicz from a play (and Jonson's Volpone) as The Honey Pot (1967).

"My agent didn't want me to do 'Eve.' Can you imagine?" Holm told the Associated Press in 1997. "He was afraid 'Miss Normal' would get caught between two cats, Bette Davis and [co-star] Anne Baxter."

Holm, in fact, didn't get along with the legendary Davis.

As Holm often recalled, when she walked on to the set the first day of shooting and said, "Good morning," Davis responded by saying, "Oh … good manners."

"I never spoke to her again — ever," Holm said.

good acting, ladies and gentleman

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/nyregion/love-and-inheritance-celeste-holms-family-feud.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

As Holm often recalled, when she walked on to the set the first day of shooting and said, "Good morning," Davis responded by saying, "Oh … good manners."

"I never spoke to her again — ever," Holm said.

Kind of side with Davis based on the reaction.

Based on others' accounts of Davis, it doesn't seem like an isolated incident.

C.H. does a mean hog call in this interview:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/15/156810156/oklahoma-actress-celeste-holm-dies-at-95

and yeah, that legal fiasco is a wowzer. (tho hardly unique it seems)

I have yet to hear a story about Davis where she's doesn't come across as an insufferable bitch.

Anyway, RIP CH.

wow, sunset boulevard

like a nylon lemon peel

so I went to this queer experimental film fest yesterday and saw 3 shorts, made across 39 years, that spun off of AAE:

http://nyulocal.com/city/2013/11/18/local-went-there-mixnyc-film-festival-gowanus/

get the titles? Aged in Wood, Remembrance, Footsteps on the Ceiling?

I wish Sotosyn and Eric had been there.

well, Lloyd Richards is commercially the most successful playwright in America, and artistically the most promising. Morbs, dear, this is ALFRED.

I don't have to play parts I'm too old for, just because I've got nothing to do with my nights! I'll make it up to you, believe me. I'll tour a year with this one, anything.

also Jerry Tartaglia quoted Ondine as saying that AAE has a line that fits every occasion in life, but I don't see the point of trying to hard-sell that here.

Some snowy night in front of the fire.

I detest cheap sentiment.

Do you have any bicarbonate of soda?

One good burp and you'll be rid of that Miss Henderson

Like I just swam the English Channel.

A milkshake?

The general atmosphere is very Macbeth-ish.

What post has or is about to get flagged?

alternate NYC Pride Sunday activity for ... somebody

http://www.movingimage.us/programs/2018/06/24/detail/all-about-evil-all-about-eve-and-showgirls/

Everybody has a heart. Except some people.

me. you’re talking about me morbs

Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of a stripper.

Also, the choice between Showgirls and All About Eve would be a whole lot harder than the choice between Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve.

or the choice between Miss Caswell and Phoebe.

damn, Eric sort of incorrect twice in one post.

I've re-watched Sunset Boulevard in the last year and major sections of it just don't hold up against its admitted peaks.

yep

All About Eve def a more tightly plotted/constructed film

as KJB sez "story is for boys"

we all know the Nancy Olson passages in SB are unbearable

sort of like the whole of Showgirls

as KJB says, All About Eve is superior

The voice-over on SB numbs me after forty-five minutes. Stop talking and use the fucking camera.

depends what you're shopping for. SB is messier and that's compelling. I like AAE a lot too. xp

Mankiewicz basically used the camera to record actors talking.

Lots of images stick in Sunset Blvd! The chimp funeral, the leering shop assistant, Norma under the projector beam in her screening room...

I like SB too but it's a film requiring Gothic corn but stuck with a director who remains a writer at heart, and a writer whose cynicism is, as usual with cynics, a hard-boiled kind of sentimentality.

and Holden looks beautiful in it! you want an image that sticks? The camera following Holden pulling himself out of Norma's pool. I think Wilder himself had a hard-on.

"It was all very queer. But queerer things were yet to come..."

Wilder is not a cynic.

Mankiewicz is also a writer at heart for God's sake.

it's a film requiring Gothic corn

so, Andrew Lloyd Webber?

I can accept Mankiewicz's almost as limited range as a filmmaker because he's directing a film about The Thee-a-thuh. As you wrote, put the camera down and let the actors run with their awesome lines.

The one bit of visual eloquence I remember in AAE takes place in the third act: when Addison follows Eve into her hotel bedroom to yell at her some more while the camera discreetly lingers by the door. Tarantino must have seen it and approved.

You don't think the last shot of the movie was at least aiming for visual eloquence?

Sure! No doubt we can find others.

I wouldn't call the last shot eloquent so much as "apt" but that's a quibble.

we must mention that AAE was also turned into a Broadway musical (starring Lauren Bacall) circa 1970

el·o·quent
ˈeləkwənt/Submit
adjective
clearly expressing or indicating something.

Charles Strouse vs. Andrew Lloyd Webber

Nobody answer that.

91!

I watched All About Eve for the first time last night and, alarmingly, did not like it very much. I'm not at all happy about this.

yeah examine your values

do better

Sunset Blvd is definitely the winner with the sound off.

(it's a MOVie after all)

yeah examine your values

haha!

In my defence, I did watch Sullivan's Travels for the first time tonight and was moved by it.

as in the late husband's portrait's moving eyes

you don't know me.

I'm not sure I've ever seen "All About Eve," tbh, for no particular reason, but it's been on my short list of movies to watch with my daughter. In this case I'm wondering what we will *both* think, in real time.

Sunset Blvd obv but I love the packed cast of Eve. Monroe is very funny. Though whenever I see George Sanders now I just think of Psychomania. He didn't have to die! They're both good!

i suspect film-y types are required by law to prefer sunset blvd, and it probably is the better movie, but i'd rather watch all about eve again, it's just a blast.
― J.D., Tuesday, October 17, 2006 2:24 AM (thirteen years ago)

i still feel this way!

I like morbs' post that "Sunset is the most fun vampire film of its era."